Wjolcz

Same. Though I know I sometimes fanboy too much.

How do you even make a non-hypergolic hot gas RCS thrusters? Are those Raptor igniters even able to operate quickly and reliably enough to be used for RCS on the Starship? Edit: I know hydrogen peroxide can be used but I remember Elon saying something about mini-Raptors used for RCS.

Soooo... P2P?

Afaik methane and oxygen aren't toxic so all that would have to be done is to evacuate the tanks and they would be fine to live in. Pretty much this. There's almost no methane but it's not like it's super toxic. Brb need to do some research on methane toxicity. Edit: it's not toxic as long as you have enough oxygen to breathe.

To turn it into a base. But then how hard is it to design a Bigelow-like base modules, put them on Starship and then lower them down to the surface vs tipping the whole thing?

Do we have any info on how well the heat shield tile did?

Doing something like this sounds scary, unless you have a lot of Starships landed nearby ready to be used to return when something goes wrong. And there's a high probability such manouvre would go wrong. If I had to do this I would either build a crane or do it the stone age style: build a ramp out of regolith, tip it onto the ramp and then remove regolith under it until it's horizontal on ground level. Edit: it would probably take a long time but it's a relatively easy thing to do. Basically, reverse this: Edit 2: alternatively, you could use excess steel to built some sort of structure/scaffolding, weld it directly to the hull and then lower it down doing basically the same thing minus the need for regolith hills.

Wouldn't surprise me if they skipped one or two of them and built the booster from their parts instead.

So, because Elon said that "if 20km works then orbit" and they want to achieve orbit with Mk5 then I'm assuming they are expecting at most 4 spectacular RUDs. Hopefully the Mk1 will face towards the ocean when doing the flip-and-land bottle trick.

So does any other competitor. I bet there were many companies doing the same thing when the first 747 was being built. I didn't even know they were planning to do something like this too.

This is interesting. I thought it would be the other way around. Thought electric first would be easier to do.

Got to LEO with Vostok and Mercury. Any stations there? If you want bigger things in space you need to use bigger rockets. Not impossible. I really don't get this one. Guess I'm not smart enough. Starship is not a sailship, neither was Saturn V.

More questions asked than answered. The experts have spoken. We will never land a man on the Moon. It's impossible without advanced technologies like the nukes. Why would it? The whole point of Starship is to make the exploration cheap. Nukes won't make it cheaper than that.

So what you meant to say is that the SL variant is not great for vacuum. Isn't that obvious? Btw, which rocket achieves tens km/s in vacuum?

So is pretty much everything in spaceflight. Do we have any numbers on how much was the first Merlin vs how much they are now? How does any of this make the engines improper?

I don't think they will. IIRC there will be at least two more launches before any recovery attempts are made. I think Brutus will fly on this one though.

+1 it still is. I agree that he says a lot of questionable things but at the same time his company is the only one to deliver payloads to orbit, land the first stage and reuse it a couple of times. I don't think he and the whole SpaceX team will succeed in realising all those crazy projects but I sure do want them to.

Yes, I think the 7 Raptors version would be a better choice for P2P. They wouldn't need vacuum engines anyway.

On the SS LES topic: what happens to the 2nd stage when the 1st stage fails? Has anything like this ever happened? IIRC the last two F9 failures involved the second stage being faulty. To me it seems kind of logical that if the first stage goes boom boom the stage falls apart and the smaller bits slow down much faster than the second heavier stage. Unless the bits get sucked up into the lower pressure zone behind the ship, but even then if the engine spool time is super fast those might get deflected or obliterated before they reach the upper stage. If an engine fails the flak jackets should stop the shrapnels and the stage would simply lose power. The worst case scenario that (I think) can happen is when the fuel tank raptures and releases all the pressure. But even then it would first spread and then ignite. How hot is the CH4 and Ox reaction? Since SS is made out of steel (with chilly fuel in it) and the engine nozzles are, well, heat resistand engine nozzles they should be fine, no? Besides, isn't the CH4 stored in relatively low pressure? Edit: even worse worst case scenario: the whole thing violently turns to the side and snaps in half. Result: complete failure and disintegration. That's something even airliners aren't built for. Do keep in mind I'm obviously not a rocket scientist, but there seems to be a lot of ways to prevent damage to the second stafe when the first one fails. Edit 2: OK, now I remembered Antares. The second stage seemed fine for the most part, so maybe SS could ditch all the heavy fuel and then use SL Raptors and fuel from the header tanks as LES? That would probably take too much time to do though.

I'm not sure I understand? I was talking about the launch pad being a ship vs it being an oil rig. Unless I completely misunderstood @magnemoe's post which might br the case too.

Don't build a ship then. Make it an oil rig-like structure instead:

I have to say that Tim Dodd has grown on me. He asks far better questions than other journalists. Though I still consider his overreacting and twitter spam a bit cringey.

Looks like Grasshopper is there too!

I have a feeling they already did all the math needed to ensure the legs will spread far enough. Given that most of the mass is closer to the bottom than the top it should be stable enough to withstand wind and rapid movement, just like the one experienced on the crawler thingy a couple of days ago. I wouldn't be too worried about this.

It's probably much safer to do the whole hop over the water.